Recently, Jeremy, a client of ours, had a breakthrough. An ah ha moment that helped him understand his new job.
As the Department Manager in a manufacturing company, Jeremy led a team, but it was small and the budget was tight, so he had to do some things himself to make sure they were done right and on time. He got along well with his team. They had been with the company a long time and they were all good at what they did, but they didn’t really take on anything new so Jeremy looked after new and unique requirements.
Since moving from Department Manager to Head of Production, Jeremy had a much larger team and was struggling with time management, team engagement and delivering the expected results. Challenges that are common when moving into a new leadership role.
In a coaching session focused on defining his new role, Jeremy made a long list of the things he would no longer be required to do including: staying late to walk a unique order through the plant; coming up with time saving processes; finding a low-cost machining method for a high-volume part, etc. Putting 2 and 2 together, he realized that if he wasn’t doing these things, he would no longer receive the praise for an exceptionally well-done job – he would no longer be the hero.
He immediately moved to; if that is not my job, what is my job? Who will be the hero? Who can do what only I could do up until now?
As he quickly answered his own questions, 4 things dawned on him.
- The first insight was that, my job is to create heroes.
- The second was that he could create multiple heroes – very exciting.
- The third was that this was going to be much more difficult than being the hero.
- The fourth was that he could have led his last small team much differently and perhaps things would have gone even better.
And so, the leadership journey begins.
Wanting to be the hero is one element of what we call the First Violinist’s Trap, an analogy that relates moving into leadership, to moving from being the star of the symphony (First Violinist) to the Conductor of the symphony. In short, you can’t be the star and lead at the same time otherwise your team lacks direction and support that it needs from its Conductor. Stay with us as we dig further into the First Violinist’s Trap and unearth more of the challenges that face leaders in transition.
